


The Taste Of Raspberry Liqueur

by LyingMonsters



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Campfires, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Giripan - Freeform, Kissing, M/M, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 14:19:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13953405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyingMonsters/pseuds/LyingMonsters
Summary: A campfire, calmness among the sea, and Heracles. He tastes like raspberry liqueur, and Kiku loves him.





	The Taste Of Raspberry Liqueur

The fire crackled, the inexpertly-gathered twigs and green wood reminiscent of another campfire on a beach, so long ago.

‘What are you thinking about, Japan?’ Heracles asks, in the way he has that does not demand but always receives the black-haired nation’s answer.

‘The campfire my friends and I made on a beach once, many years ago.’ After a moment, Kiku smiles at the fire and adds, ‘I did not know you then. Neither as Greece or Heracles.’

‘Hmm.’ Heracles’s fingers move independently, flipping the poker through his fingers with a deftness and quickness Kiku would fear if it wasn’t his Grecian with gentleness to temper the strength of his namesake. ‘We’ve come so far.’

‘We really have.’ He doesn’t even realize he’s turned to accept the soft kiss, or what warned him of it. ‘Mmm, Heracles.’

‘Kiku Honda,’ he whispers back, a smile curling his lips, faintly stained with the drink in his hands. ‘I love you.’

The first time he’d said that, Kiku had tripped over his response and hidden away in shame for days until Feliciano had called him, saying that Heracles thought his declaration was unwanted. Kiku had run to Heracles in a panic, needing to reassure him that no, he had just been so nervous and happy and flustered that all his words tumbled out of their positions and onto the slate tiles of the pathway in front of his house.

So he’d stood there, clutching the front of his thin sleeping robe, flushed and panting from the run, and tried to wake Heracles from the alcohol daze he had induced upon himself.

Heracles had answered the door with a bottle of raspberry liqueur in hand, eyes sunken, and had struggled to conceal his astonishment when he saw Kiku.

‘Greece, I…’

He’d fumbled his apology even worse, and just stood there, babbling out a clumsy explanation interspersed with ‘I’m sorry, Greece-san’ until his voice failed and he stood there, staring at the ground, noticing that Greece had slate tiles in front of his house, too.

‘Kiku Honda,’ he’d said, so softly that Japan thought that he’d imagined it; definitely, Greece had never called him by his human name before. But he had. And then he’d stepped forward and before Kiku could react, gentle hands were cupping his face, and lips were pressed against his, and the only memory that might be true were the softness of Heracles’s fingers as they smoothed over his cheekbones.

Heracles had kissed him. Simply pulled him close and closer until they were hovering millimeters apart, and then those millimeters were gone too, and he tasted of salt and some of the raspberry alcohol that was still clutched in his fist. It had shattered on the ground, and Kiku couldn’t care less.

Tonight, he tastes of the same raspberry liqueur, they’ve been sharing glasses of the bottle he brought all night. It’s _his_ taste, irrevocably linked in Kiku’s mind to the song of the sea and a soft voice that reminds him of good things in the world when he cannot himself. It is the taste of the one who pulls him out of his chaos.

‘Heracles Karpusi. I love you.’

After so many years, the words that were once so hesitant are the words Kiku are almost definite the ones that pass his lips most often, and he takes more than quiet pleasure in the fact.

‘We’ve come so far,’ Kiku repeats softly, his words more humming than words. His voice is always, always has been, music to Heracles’s ears, and those words make it a melody of the gods.

After a long moment only broken by a cracking log, Heracles pulls away to nudge the wood back together with a look of quiet content back at the smaller man.  

Kiku takes the poker and stirs the fire with a small laugh. ‘And yet neither of us can make a proper fire.’

‘Never needed to,’ Heracles mutters into the skin of his shoulder, having repositioned to Kiku’s side. It is no longer an odd sensation to have his shoulders bare in one of Heracles’s worn T-shirts. ‘You warm me more than enough.’

‘The green wood lends the food an interesting smoky flavour,’ Kiku continues as if the innuendo had escaped him, expertly drawing the brittle, blackened shell of a marshmallow off the gooey insides.

‘And is that good or bad?’ Heracles inquires. Kiku laughs and offers the messy marshmallow in his fingers to the Grecian.

‘See for yourself.’

Heracles’s lips twitch into a smile as he leans forward to accept, his mouth warm against Kiku’s fingers for a second before pulling away, a mediative look on his face.

‘Well?’

‘I need your input.’ When Kiku reaches for another marshmallow to toast (and accidentally burn, interrupted by kisses and flirtatious words that make both of them blush like teenagers new to their relationship), Heracles shakes his head. ‘This one.’

‘Herac-oh.’ A faint pink dusts Kiku’s cheeks, and he kisses the Grecian back.

‘So?’ Heracles asks, leaning back into the beanbag they share. He insisted on bringing it, and Kiku didn’t protest.

‘Good. No, bad. No...I may have to try it again to see,’ Kiku answers, a smile gracing his features. Heracles gladly obliges.

They share the night and the bag of marshmallows and the bottle of raspberry liqueur, their laughter weaving up and into the night sky like it could catch the stars and bring them down for them to examine.

Kiku points out that they would...that the stars would do something, but the raspberry drink makes his head the most delicious kind of fuzzy, or maybe it’s the late night or the smoke or Heracles. Heracles’s kisses or his smell of sea and sun and raspberry and now the fire, or maybe it’s just _him_ , everywhere he’s close to Kiku, which is everywhere.

This is heaven, Kiku calmly realizes. Perfection, utopia, Paradise, whatever the humans wanted to call it before they realized it had no name, it had no location in the ‘worlds underneath’, it just _was_. It existed for Kiku as surely as the sun, existed in the form of his Grecian’s sea-coloured eyes and soft skin and slightly tangled hair.

What did Heracles call his Paradise? Elysium, yes. A place where the good were finally rewarded with a break from the fury. A break Kiku finally realized he’d found so long ago, in the invitations to nap or stop for a moment and play with Corporal Cat or just to sit down, lean back against a sun-warmed chest and breathe.

Heracles’s quiet reminders to live.

That there were good things among reddened uniforms and constant challenges, among all the chaos that life continually rose and sank through, if one was to simply sit and be aware of them. The sound of the sea. A gentle thumb brushing across your knuckles when you walked together. The purr of a cat when it is well and truly satisfied with it’s lot in life. The taste of raspberry liqueur.

_You are my Elysium, Heracles Karpusi._

And in return, Heracles deserves his honest self. He deserves opinions that haven’t been filtered through a thousand gossamer layers, and words that aren’t really necessary in the conversation until he responds, and then they are. He deserves things like this night alone, tucked into the corner of a beach on a worn blue bean bag, sharing stories and words as the stars spiral above them.

And so Kiku will give it, gladly, wholeheartedly, with every fibre of his being, just as Heracles gives to him. They laugh and kiss and talk until the morning star lifts her rosy face, and then their words slow to a comfortable murmur, so intimate it seems impossible that the other could have heard. But they do, because the vibrations of each other’s voices are ingrained in their own as much as the sea winds that carry them.

The sea is warm here, and it must be common for people to camp out on the beach, sprawled out on the sand, or curled up on a giant bean bag, mouths kissed red and sugary with marshmallows and raspberry liqueur, tangled together until morning, drifting with hands entwined. To save each other’s lives from the chaos. It should be.

‘I love you. Kiku Honda.’

‘I love you. Heracles Karpusi.’

**Author's Note:**

> I might be obsessed with this ship. I will admit that I am infatuated with the calm and peace they can offer each other.
> 
> They don't have messy drama. They don't have wars that tore their relationship to shreds. They are simply happy, they are soft and deeply breathing and I love them. 
> 
> :: The ideas you get late and night and scribble down in fear of them slipping away, even then


End file.
